Note: There are minor plot spoilers in this review.
The Cooke family is the archetypal dysfunctional family: a father, a mother, and three children—one boy, one so-average girl, and one not-so-average girl. The father becomes a drunk, the mother becomes a recluse, the boy becomes a felon, the so-average girl becomes a calculated talker, and the not-so-average girl inexplicably vanishes. Karen Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves follows—well, more like listens to—Rosemary Cooke, the so-average girl who could easily have won the “talking Olympics,” if that were a real competition. The story tells of Rosemary, Fern (the not-so-average sister), Lowell (the brother), and their dynamic with their family, with and without Fern’s presence. The novel explores themes of unconditional love, psychological experimentation, and the implications of the two haphazardly colliding. As Barbara Kingsolver, a writer at the New York Times, explicitly states: “To experience this novel exactly as the author intended, a reader should avoid the flap copy and everything else written about it.” However, there is an elephant—or a chimp, rather—in the room, and Kingsolver’s sentiment simply cannot be avoided, primarily because the author does not want it avoided.
Rosemary tells the reader what the not-so-secret secret is on page 77: “There’s something you didn’t know yet about Mary. The imaginary friend of my childhood was not a little girl. She was a little chimpanzee. So, of course, was my sister Fern.” Yes, Fern is a chimpanzee. No, the family is not crazy—well, maybe they are a little crazy. The Cookes wanted to raise a chimpanzee alongside their own child as an experiment, to test the limits of love and human communication and interaction. While We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves has an intriguing plot, the confusing and frantically oscillating narrative and overly complex language make it difficult to remain interested in the story and to care for the characters.
“Skip the beginning. Start in the middle. So the middle of my story comes in the winter of 1996,” Rosemary says. All throughout Rosemary’s life, her father persistently told her to “start in the middle”; Rosemary was such a talker that, perhaps, she over explained things. This can become enervating to any parent who is already drained and exasperated by work and the day’s chores. Rosemary even exhausts you in her frequent (and infrequent) explanations: She goes from utterly over explaining to sorely under explaining in a matter of seconds, which is jarring. One page will feature paragraphs riddled with adjectives, outdated (and unheard of) vocabulary words only found in the recesses of an SAT book, simple descriptions that become lost in verbose language, and commas that create seemingly endless sentences. While another page will feature sentences as little as five words long.
Clearly, she is going for an awkward amalgam of Hemmingway and Shakespeare.
Sadly, this combination does not work in the slightest. Rosemary even comments on simplified memories, stating, “Language does this to our memories—simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. An of-told story is like a photograph in a family album; eventually, it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.” This creates a contradiction in the novel’s writing: Rosemary understands the importance of simplified language—she becomes very brief in her language later in her in life—but she does not simplify her language often. George Orwell once said, “Never use a foreign word, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.” With a sentence like, “So who knows the revelries, what romps my memories have taken with so little corroboration to restrain them,” evidently, both Rosemary and Fowler do not understand the clichéd adage: keep it simple stupid. This over indulgence in language is welcomed to me as a reader, but the average reader who picks up a book once every blue moon may be perturbed by the Victorianesque high-language choices. It is this over indulgence in diction and verbosity that causes the plot to stumble on its own two feet.
Ron Charles, a writer from The Washington Post, comments on the plot, saying, “[The plot] is not the novel’s strongest suit. The wackiness that stumbles into the final chapters feels incongruous with the book’s poignancy and its serious themes.” Though Ron says this about the final chapters of the novel, this inclination carries itself throughout the entirety of the novel. Yes, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves deals with complex themes and is as visceral as it is poignant; however, the frenetic oscillation between the past and the present create a palpable tripping sensation. The way Rosemary breaks the fourth wall and talks directly to us is a bit jarring as well, especially since what she says in these moments are neither important nor relevant to the plot. In one scene, Lowell and Russell, Lowell’s friend, drag child Rosemary on a “secret adventure, a spy caper.” Fowler writes (or Rosemary says):
More songs on the radio and an ad for an original radio mystery play to be aired on Halloween. Then a caller who wanted to talk about a professor who was making his entire class read Dracula, even the Christians who thought it imperiled their souls. (Let’s just pause here for a moment to imagine how a person who felt imposed on by vampires back in 1979 feels today. And then, right back to my story)
Hilarious, sure, but superfluous; the bit in parenthesis could have been taken out of the novel and nothing would have changed. Now, it is understood that Rosemary is cracking wise; that is all fine, and Rosemary has good intentions, but it is neither adding nor advancing the plot. There is an ancient axiom somewhere that says something along the lines of only include it if it advances the plot. That parenthetical bit does nothing for the plot, and thus it can be removed with no remorse and the paragraph would read the same. This is not the first instance either.
The whole novel is not an egregious pile of drivel that should be unread though—it deserves some of the attention it has received. Lesley McDowell, a writer at Independent UK, claims: “And it’s with such ease that she also asks the important questions, about how and why we love one another, what happens when that love is taken away, and what responsibility we have once we instill and respond to love.” Fowler has the audacity to take the stereotypical bildungsroman (coming-of-age tale) and twist it to make it feel fresh. Though some novels in the past have traveled the ideas and themes of human-animal experimentation and interaction, Fowler takes it to another level. With the help of a highly intelligent woman as the centre piece, Fowler exposes communication in a way that linguists would love. The plot’s seriousness and sheer boldness make it a read that is as touching as it is frustrating; both emotions exist simultaneously and harmoniously. This harmony make We Are all Completely Beside Ourselves a novel that is one parts mediocre, and one parts excellent.
As Rosemary’s mother said, “I wanted you to have an extraordinary life.” In the end, Rosemary (and her imaginary chimpanzee, Mary, and her sister, Fern) had an extraordinary life. For all of the pitfalls the novel falls into, its sheers brazenness and willingness to tackle a sensitive and rather unexplored topic make it a read that may be worthwhile. If you can get over the daft and incoherent storytelling and redundant loquaciousness, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves can be a somewhat enjoyable read. (The operative word is “somewhat” here.) Just know that ithyphallic “[is] not really a very useful word.” Oh, and have a dictionary in arms reach.
